In case you haven't heard yet, while the US public has worrying about SOPA and PIPA, Europe started dealing with their own version, called ACTA. While some were allegedly taken by surprise by the massive protests against SOPA and PIPA, everyone's pretty much used to American's protesting things. But would you be surprised to hear about anti-ACTA demonstrations in Prague? Or Czech members of parliament refusing to support it "as a matter of principle", and claiming that the media "played a part in the hush-up"[1]? A Slovenian ambassador even made a public apology for having signed the agreement, claiming that she acted carelessly and in ignorance and failed in her civic duty[2]. That is a level of candor that we never expect to hear from a US politician. Admitting ignorance as the Slovenian ambassador did is the first step towards gaining wisdom. But unfortunately, admitting ignorance is socially unnacceptable around here. Everybody knows, tacitly, that no one person can possibly be an expert on everything that they would need to know to decide every issue that faces the government. We'll start to make progress a lot faster when we can get around to no longer being embarrassed by that fact.
[1] http://m.ceskapozice.cz/en/news/politics-policy/czech-euro-mps-oppose-%E2%80%98completely-wide-mark%E2%80%99-acta
[2] http://boingboing.net/2012/02/03/slovenias-ambassador-apologi.html
ACTA isn't just a European bill, its a multinational agreement. As far as I understand it, the US has already signed the agreement along with Canada, Australia, Japan, Morocco, New Zealand, Singapore, and South Korea. Since it is a multinational agreement, it is used as a guideline for countries acting against internet piracy. It seems to be just as big of a deal as was SOPA, just not as many people seem to be concerned about it. Well, not as many people in the United States at least. Weird.
ReplyDelete(in response to Mark) I think that not many people are concerned about it because the media hasn't made a big deal out of it. It seems to me that most people today aren't really as well informed as they think they are, they just wait for something to get big and then will follow along, but otherwise are content sitting in ignorance
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